Robot

Western Vinyl; 2006

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For his entry in Western Vinyl's "Portrait Series", Robert Lippok of To Rococo Rot chose to focus his creative energy on the robot, a subject long an object of fascination to electronic musicians. Western culture's collective unconscious fixes the robot's natural historical backdrop somewhere between 1920, when Czech writer Karel Čapek coined the term in his play R.U.R., and the 1950s, when the beginning of the space age made a future cohabiting with robots seem like an inevitability. So robot-themed electronic works from the likes jof Kraftwerk to Jeff Mills have always have a nostalgic, days-of-future-past sense about them.

Lippok follows course in this respect to a degree, generally foregoing recent advances in software and processing power and working instead with simple electronics to create a record that could have been created any time in the last dozen years. The subtlety and restraint he brings to the music are in line with his work on his main project; dynamic range is limited, small shifts in mood do the bulk of the work. "Unexpected Behavior, No. 7", after two short warm-ups, nicely demonstrates the upside of the approach, its spooky, pulsating synth and insistent high-hat working together with a squelching analog synth to create a palpable sense of tension.

Unfortunately, "Unexpected Behavior, No. 7" aside, the most engaging pieces here are the fragments that serve as interludes. "To The Zero Movement Point" and "Closed Loop 3" threaten violence with electronic scrapes moving randomly ominous synth drones, and "Silent Movement (No Servo)", though locked into a place Terry Riley moved away from 35 years ago after "Persian Surgery Dervishes", ably evokes the wonder of the early electronic era. But then there's four-minute tracks "After Work" and "Pick and Place", two plodding mid-tempo pieces that fit too easily with the forgettable portions of the TRR oeuvre.

It's hard not to wish that the object of inspiration, the robot, had a clearer relationship to the music. It's got some pleasingly retro tendencies and a sharp cover, but Robot is out of time in an unexpected way, bringing to mind late-90s IDM at its blandest and least offensive.